Ruiner

A 3D cyberpunk Hotline Miami-alike from the publishers of Hotline Miami. I could write a bunch of words, but I would recommend you just look at the cover art: a stocky individual, wearing the mask of Guy-Manuel from Daft Punk (and reads KILL YOU over and over), is wearing a leather jacket and holding a gun. Behind him, a cyberpunk-looking babe, seductively looking over her shoulder. Skyscrapers. In some versions of the art, you can see her butt. Cyberpunk color scheme. I don’t even need to point out that there’s thumping witch-house music that plays over all the levels, you should just know that looking at the picture. If you look at this picture and go, “This looks stupid,” this is probably not for you.

As someone who looks at this picture and finds that it appeals to something inside of me…I think this game is pretty good. As you’d expect for Devolver-published games, it has a very strong aesthetic throughout. The game is very predominantly RED, even on the main menu. I’m pretty sure the entire game takes place on one night, mostly in basements. The game’s silent protagonist “speaks” through images on his mask. As glib as I sounded earlier, I think a lot of this game’s appeal is through the cyberpunk aesthetic, which this game handles very well. It looks like some video nasty that belongs in the grindhouse or on Night Flight.

As a game, it’s also appealing, but this is coming from someone who enjoyed Hotline Miami a lot. It’s a twin-stick shooter that controls almost identically to Hotline Miami, at least on console: you use the left stick to move and the right stick to adjusting your aim, with the right trigger firing a gun and the right bumper (or R1) swinging a melee weapon. Also, you have abilities like shields, grenades and mind controlling…except the ability tree is so huge you won’t get all the abilities in one playthrough.

As for the game, you wander through basements and end up in combat arenas where you get bumrushed by, like 20 guys to kill, as opposed to the measured combat mazes of Hotline Miami. And when you kill them, it’s ridiculously violent, and I think the game is even trying to do something similar with its violence that Hotline Miami does, but nowhere near as well. Thematic spoilers for both Hotline Miami and Ruiner, as well as plot spoilers for Ruiner, to explain what I mean: Hotline Miami tries to make the point that the protagonist is relishing in the game’s violence, which I think it succeeds at because the protagonist deals with his enemies in more and more gruesome ways.

In Ruiner, the idea is that it’s easy to toy with human life in the cyberpunk future, and the game tries to depict this with TrafficKing’s fate. You kill TrafficKing, then bring him back as a floating torso you torture a bunch, then you kill him…then the villains bring TrafficKing back as a robot to kill you, and then they torture him a bunch while doing so. Except…none of the violence inflicted on TrafficKing is all that brutal. He gets electrocuted a bunch in a way that I found kind of funny. And his second death involves him being set on fire, which looks ridiculous. And he keeps cussing you out the whole time, it’s too over the top to be haunting like some of the deaths in Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2.

The worst thing I can say about this game, and honestly the reason why this isn’t a 4 star game, is that I felt like the melee attack felt awful, like I was “clearly”* hitting enemies with the attack visually yet nothing was happening. For a game this intense and difficult, the melee attack should work every time. Also, some of the guns suck, and the game should at least distinguish on the HUD which guns require a wind-up versus firing immediately. I know you can experiment and memorize that, but that’s just a minor gripe.
(* Take that “clearly” as you will, I’d swear upon it in court)

Anyway, I think this game is good. I’d easily recommend it if you like Hotline Miami, and I’d otherwise recommend it if you like cyberpunk grindhouse aesthetics or twin stick action games. Also, it’s rather short – my first playthrough took like three, four hours. Which honestly isn’t a bad thing, the game doesn’t overstay its welcome at all, but consider that if you’re budget conscious.

Finally, the soundtrack is excellent. But that's obvious.

This love letter to cheesy revenge stories presents itself with style over substance - and that is not a problem at all!

When playing Ruiner you mostly spend your time doing one of two things. The first being exploring the hub world that is Rengkok South (as the great Susumu Hirasawa brings an excellent melancholic song to play in the background) where you can take in the setting and get some lore insight. When not doing that, you're on a mission where the game starts to shine in the way that makes me like it, beyond from my love for cyberpunk.

I think it's fair to compare this game to a rhythm game in the way you get into a meditative flow where you don't think anymore and just act. The slow motion that opens up the fight let's you get one last chance to breathe in before you're consumed by the throbbing synthwave soundtrack (which I prefer louder in the mix than the rest of the sound) that almost guides your character and syncs up with a lot of your moves. This is sometimes interrupted by an ambient track between fights that switches up the mood for while, until you're back into it. Also the game gets bonus points for not following the current trend of having a frustrating take on the skill tree mechanic.

The bosses are mostly nothing too special and actually interrupt the flow of the game, but just like in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, it's a small annoyance that doesn't ruin the whole experience for me.

For being a simple game with a lot of derivative story beats, it gets the job done very well with satisfying gameplay, solid art design that evokes a red passion in a time of technology, and a hypnotic soundtrack (that I'd argue makes you play the game better). Pick this up if you want a fast paced twin-stick shooter and are up for cyberpunk that you don't have to take too seriously.

Ruiner is just the type of game that Devolver Digital is known for. Simple but addictive gameplay, great visuals and soundtrack. The story is a simple revenge story, with a lot of meme-ish dialogue that i found pretty amuzing for the most part. The gameplay is damn hard for a twin stick shooter, with me racking up dozens of deaths in certain checkpoints. There are some lag with the dash controls, and the enemies are a bit too bullet spongey for what i wished. Some bosses are also more annoying that actual difficult. But for the most part it is a very solid, short action game.